Muse back!
March 18, 2007 / Sunday
Last Day Of Evals
Last night, I had a dream about showing up to run the Red eval session and finding a drill sergeant there barking orders at the skaters. I was fine with letting him run the show, until he tried to separate the Red skaters from the Green, his reasoning being that the Red skaters didn't need to do the eval drills. "No!" I told him, "We need them as benchmarks!" I don't remember what happened next, except that I was walking out of the rink and along beautiful Lake Tahoe to go get a paper bag from some place 5 minutes away for my leftovers, and on my way back I saw a woman in a bikini waterskiing in the lake's chilly March waters. Um, yeah, and brrr.
In reality, the Red session came and went with minimal barking, in part because we had only two drills on the schedule. I was able to get everyone to behave and do everything they were supposed to and no drill sergeants appeared to tell them otherwise. Phew.
Kim, who was originally scheduled to run the show, was there to back me up and make sure I didn't screw up too badly. Thanks Kim for the opportunity and coach coaching! It was really nice to step out there, do my thing, and step off the ice knowing that there's really nothing scary about it after all.
And while I'm blogging out thank yous, thank you Carolyn for letting me borrow a pair of socks! For some reason, even though I vividly remember grabbing a bunch of socks to put in my hockey bag, those socks somehow did not end up there. Where are they? I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet that I picked them up, got distracted, and dropped them right back into the sock bin.
Feedback from today's session included a comment about how I need to speak up more. Speak from the diaphragm, I was told. Funny, that sounds familiar. Oh yeah, my physical therapist last year told me to breathe with my diaphragm more. Apparently, I'm doing this breathing and speaking thing all wrong. Well, I guess I knew that about the speaking, although I always forget how exactly I'm supposed to project my voice. I should leave a note on my coach whistle for next time.
Speaking of feedback, what could I have done differently or better? Comment, people, comment!
Got into the rest of my gear for the Maroon session immediately following. What a crowded session! When it came time for semi-circle shooting I decided to let the hopefuls have more shooting time and skated over to wave hello to Val, who responded by reaching her little baby hand for my gigantic gloved hand on the other side of the glass. Holy smokes, the tip of a gloved hockey finger is the same size as an entire baby hand! I learn something new every day.
As usual, had fun in the scrimmage at the end of the session. Two plays of note: (1) Batting a pass out of the air with my stick and taking off with it, seeing nothing but ice between me and the goalie, promptly losing the puck, and holding my head while yelling, "Aaagh! Why do I always lose the puck?!" in reference to a similar open ice puck loss incident at least week's eval scrimmage. (2) Deciding to take the puck in from somewhere near our own faceoff dot, maneuvering through three (ooh, maybe four?) of the other team's defenders in what felt like a very small space, and taking a solid shot on net. Unfortunately for me, Cara came up with an equally solid save. No matter, I was just thrilled that I'd managed to squeeze through such tight traffic. In fact, I was so excited I immediately returned to the bench and hopped off the ice. Can't top that, I'd better sit!
And so it ends, another set of pre-season evals. Now let's play some hockey!
March 18, 2007 07:36 PM | Hockey
Comments
Well you can't breathing too wrong or you'd be passed out.
If you want more practice for on ice coaching ping me. I'm handling this Friday's green practice, though if my little pea brain remembers correctly you have something planned.
Posted by: Shadow at March 20, 2007 04:26 PM
Something, ha, more like three things. Too bad, Greenies are fun. :)
Posted by: Viv at March 20, 2007 04:53 PM